The present invention relates generally to emergency medical equipment, and more particularly to a bed-on-demand system which provides the key features and components of a hospital bed and headwall typically found in a standard hospital room, yet in a portable self-contained package that can be set up and used anywhere without the infrastructure of the standard hospital room.
Recent large scale disasters including natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes, and man-made disasters resulting from large-scale accidents, terrorist activities, and war, reiterates the importance of effective emergency relief and disaster response. Such disasters typically produce surges in numbers of people needing various levels of medical attention.
Currently, the world is unprepared to adequately respond to such disasters. Post-disaster, emergency response and disaster relief management teams are faced with several problems. First, hospitals today generally operate at near-capacity even during normal times. When faced with a surge of additional patients, most hospitals simply do not have sufficient patient facilities such as patient bed capacity to handle the additional influx of patients. In addition, the disasters that have caused the surge of patients are also often responsible for the interruption, or even destruction, of hospital infrastructure such as power, communications, etc., which may result in actually diminishing a hospital's capacity. Disasters also often occur remote to nearby hospitals, and temporary triage and treatment centers must be set up on or near the site of the disaster where standard hospital facilities such as pure sine-wave AC power required by sensitive medical equipment, and ventilation and oxygen treatment systems, are unavailable.
Increasing population densities and the trend towards more frequent and higher-intensity storm systems will only increase the need for a solution to the surge capacity problems outlined above.